Felipe Paulino

“I know it was you, Alfredo, you broke my heart–because I should have picked you up yesterday. You’re nothing to me now. Not a brother, not a friend–but, I’ll admit you may be an intriguing add in fantasy baseball this week.” Michael Corleone’s words for his fantasy team are harsh but true. Reds pitcher Alfredo Simon continued his streak of success yesterday, pitching six scoreless innings versus the Cubs, allowing just six base runners and striking out three. Coming off the heels of an eight inning gem last week against Tampa, where he allowed just one run and struck out four, Alfredo now has pitched 21.0 innings, allowing just 2 ER and 13 hits, while grabbing two wins. It looks like he’ll stick in the rotation while Mat Latos is on the shelf. Simon’s sparkling 0.86 ERA is good for top 3 in the league, and the 0.81 WHIP sure is purdy. But before you go racing to the waiver wire dropping your Stephen Strasburgs or your R.A. Dickeys for this guy, just wait a second. Because I didn’t say Simon says? Got ya! I know. Bad. I’m sorry. Anyway, let’s examine if Simon says you should grab Alfredo or not. If we look closer into the starts, it’s a small sample size but we get the sense he’s been pretty lucky so far, and not just because he’s faced the Mets, Rays and Cubs. Simon’s .194 BABIP is good for top 10 in the league. Along with a 3.14 FIP (3.90 xFIP) and an insane 94.3 LOB% we have a ton a nerdy stats that say major regression coming. Translation: Alfredo is probably gonna get sauced. Mama mia! That’s not to say that those numbers are not still very good. After moving to Cincinnati from Baltimore, Simon was awesome in relief, with a 2.76 ERA and 1.25 WHIP in two years from 2012-2013, way above his career averages (3.98 ERA and 1.33 WHIP). And he’s been extremely efficient as a starter this year as his 13.4 pitches thrown per inning (roughly 3.5 per batter) shows. Doode is doing work. The 13/4 K/BB ratio is nothing special, but he is working efficiently in his starts, going deep into games. So Simon says, if you need a streamer you can grab AlFredo for his next start in Pittsburgh. He’s under 20% owned, and he’s making us an offer we can’t refuse. Ride this hot streak out for now, but if he’s ready to sleep with the fishes don’t hesitate to take him out to the middle of Lake Tahoe and take care of business.

So I’ve been leading with pitchers all the time. That shizz is seriously gonna get boring fast. And believe me, I’ve been married for basically 10 years so I know boring. I ain’t playin’ DraftKings to feel like all I got is top or bottom! TMI? Yeah, TMI…but I’m gonna do things a little differently because I feel like it. And because Justin Morneau is feeling it, whatever that ‘it’ is when he can’t seem to miss the ball. Morneau just finished a road trip to San Diego, aka Petco Park, aka the vast desert of homerunlessness and came away with a couple of doubles and a HR. Before that, he hit a HR in San Fran in the previous series. And now? Morneau gets to play at home against a pitcher named Jonathan Pettibone, or ‘Mr. Bonepetter’ as he’s known on his adult film sets. To put it mildly, Jonathan is ‘WHOOOEEEFFF’. That’s me spelling out the sound of throwing up. Don’t look at me strange, we all throw up differently. The Stream-O-Nator spells throwup ‘-9’. That’s his dollar value today. No this isn’t golf, negative numbers aren’t good around here. Needless to say, both I and the Hitter-Tron agree that Morneau is set up for a fine day in Denver and given his price is only $4,400 on the good ‘ole DK, it would be smart to get a least a small piece of the Rocky Mountain High that’s sure to come. Not that kind of high. Unless you’re actually in Colorado. Then it’s totally cool and legal. Wait, aren’t we still teaching D.A.R.E. in school? You so crazy, .gov. Speaking of cool and legal, before we move onto the picks for the day, I wanted to remind you of the Sweet Spot like my wife does like all the time…TMI again? Oops…anyways, sign up to DraftKings via our promo and get a free ticket. You win with said free ticket, you get a shot at working your way into said Sweet Spot for free and get to take a picture with me as I take your oversized check and run away with it down the hill like Shooter McGavin does with Happy’s jacket. But enough about my impending thievery, let’s do this. Here are the Razzball picks for the 4/18/2014 slate over on DraftKings…

It feels like there’s a lot of overreaction going on this year. Maybe it’s just because I live in the Philadelphia sports market, where one day you’re a popular All-Pro with a banner on the side of the stadium and the next you’re slandered and labeled a malcontent gang-banger.

Or maybe it’s some of the fantasy writing I’m seeing this year where a guy changes course five times in the same thought – “Mike Olt was a great prospect for Texas, but we don’t see him holding onto the third base job in Chicago, then again it’s always possible his power stroke could be dangerous in Wrigley. Still, Olt is a rookie and should be treated as such, unless he gets on a roll. Then you should pick him up, if you want to. But you don’t have to. We would.”

The Reds manager Bryan Price, who I thought was their catcher, has a long way to go to catch up to ex-manager, Dusty Baker, on the Crazy-Meter, but naming Jonathan Broxton the closer a week before he’s even healthy, is a great start. Now Price needs to throw Latos 147 pitches in his first game back and he’ll be running a dead heat. Apparently, Broxton can’t only fill pants, he can fill shoes too. Dumpster Pants isn’t safe by any means, but when a crazy-as-a-fox manager names someone the closer, and he could be the closer for the next two months, I’d pick him up. Not literally, no one can pick up Broxton literally. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

As spring training takes off, we, the wonderful people of Razzball, thought it would be a good idea to look into some intra-team rivalries. What positions are a lock? What positions are being fought over? What positions will they hire me to fill-in for (second base Blue Jays, I’m looking at you)? Find out as the second part of this series will focus on AL Central… (You can check out the NL East Spring Training Preview here.)

Bud Norris and Zack Greinke both struck out 12 hitters yesterday. One in 6 innings and the latter in 7 innings, if latter means Greinke. And when I saw their lines it occurred to me, that my Bud’s gonna be just like Greinke, when he grows up, my Bud’s gonna be just like Greinke. Please, blog, may I have some more?

Johan Santana threw the first no-hitter in Mets history last night and boy his arm must be tired! He tossed a career high 134 pitches. The game was Johan’s second consecutive shutout versus what many to believe to be one of the leagues best offenses in St. Please, blog, may I have some more?

Did you ever get flustered to the point where you never know what to say. Well that’s where I am currently. Fantasy baseball is tertiary right now; yea it’s on a a whole third level of importance as I type this. Please, blog, may I have some more?

On Wednesday, Jon Lester gave a line of 6 2/3 IP, 4 ER, 10 baserunners, 7 Ks and I said he found the sweet spot between yawn and ho-hum. Some runs, bunch of hits and not at all dominating. It was just another run-of-the-mill start for Lester. Please, blog, may I have some more?